It's really a must. Without HAXM the emulator is dead slow. Also remember to enable VT-x on your mainboard's BIOS settings for HAXM to work.

1) select Intel Atom (x86) - for VT-x to work
2) skin - select WVGA800 - for other skins the emulator is too big/small
3) do not set more than 700 MB of RAM - Windows does not handle that well
4) remember to check "Use host GPU"